Cambodia no refuge for our shaky human rights record

By Narelle Grant

By the time you read this it’s quite likely Australia will have signed a controversial deal enabling the transfer of about 1000 refugees from Nauru to Cambodia.

I don’t know how you feel about this proposal, but I find it hard to comprehend how our government could perpetrate another item in the litany of awfulness we are visiting on our fellow human beings. Just when you think this asylum seeker business has hit rock bottom, our country sinks to new levels. I say we, because even those of us who say “not in my name”, are tarnished by our government’s actions.

Why would Australia even think of burdening Cambodia, a country with a poor human rights record, no infrastructure for resettling refugees, or government services to support them and where, according to the UN, 45 per cent of its people live in poverty? The removal of 1000 refugees from Nauru would almost empty its detention centre and decimate the island’s economy, but their arrival in Cambodia would mean an almost 1500 per cent increase in that country’s number of refugees. To complicate things further, Cambodia is Buddhist, but most refugees on Nauru are Muslim and don’t speak Khmer. Yet again we are abrogating our responsibilities under the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees.

There is also concern that Australia is attempting to coerce Cambodia into accepting its refugees. In the current shrinking aid budget, FUNDING for “cross regional programs” was more than doubled from $309 million to $686 million, and Labor has accused the government of attempting to buy off Cambodia’s co-operation.

The question is what is the quid pro quo? Why hasn’t our government told us what we are getting in return? There are also concerns about corruption in Cambodia with Transparency International ranking this country 160 out of 177 for government transparency and human rights abuses committed by government agents.

The Cambodian Human Rights Action Committee, a coalition of 21 Cambodian NGOs, has expressed “serious concerns” about this proposal, and particularly about the lack of transparency surrounding it. Australia’s mainstream churches have also been critical, and Sister Denise Coghlan from the Jesuit Refugee Service has suggested Australia is setting a dangerous precedent by attempting to OUTSOURCE its responsibility to refugees.

Joyce Chia, from the University of NSW’s Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law has said the proposed transfer was “a flawed deal” for all parties and that the refugees should be resettled in Australia.

She said, “It would be far cheaper for the Australian people, it would be a better outcome for human rights, it would be more legally compliant, and it would be better for these refugees who have been EXTENSIVELY traumatised by their incarceration.”

In my humble opinion that’s it in a nutshell.

We shouldn’t be surprised about the Cambodia plan. The bona fides of any government who says it wants to protect asylum seekers from people smugglers’ leaky boats, yet is prepared to coerce them into manning boats themselves is questionable. Did our government care if they drowned, starved to death, or went back to the persecution they were fleeing in the first place? Seems to me the smugglers were a safer option. As Hugh DeKretser, a refugee lawyer, said: “It’s not clear why the government eventually decided not to proceed with the lifeboat plan but the whole episode reveals the desperate measures they are prepared to use regardless of the human cost.”

Beyond sad, isn’t it?

Actions our government takes on asylum seekers no longer surprise. For fifteen years it has orchestrated a hate campaign seized upon by mainstream media. The amount of misinformation out there and the depth of feeling whipped up in some sections of the community is downright scary. Thank goodness the internet, SOCIAL MEDIA, and alternative news sources allow us to get some kind of balanced information.

We remove their medications, replace their names with numbers, then send these fellow human beings to concentration camps where they go mad in squalid conditions, and can be raped, bashed, and even murdered. Today I read a letter to Australia from a child in detention. This child asks what they have done for us to hate them so much we would send them to such hell. How do you answer that?

The fact that government ministers who claim to be Christian are in charge of perpetuating this human suffering is to say the least unconscionable, and shows that as a nation we have lost our moral compass. The “Cambodian Solution” is the latest in a long line of what the future may well describe as atrocities. To do it shrouded in such secrecy also puts a CLOUD over the heart of what is supposed to be one of the world’s great democracies.

If, like me, you don’t condone what’s happening on this or any other issue then find the nearest March Australia venue on the weekend of August 30-31 and use your democratic right to protest.